Mendeley Launches $10,001 API Battle - 'Calling All Developers! Build an App to Make Science More Open!'

NEW YORK, March 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), one of the world's largest crowd-sourced research databases, today announced the Mendeley API Binary Battle, challenging talented developers to build an application on top of Mendeley's open database of over 70 million research papers, usage statistics, reader demographics, social tags, and related research recommendations. The winning application will receive a grand prize of $10,001.

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"I am already seeing clear evidence that Mendeley is changing the face of science, and the Binary Battle is one of the reasons why. With tons of academic data, and all the computational power to handle it, I am certain that developers will provide innovative new ways to slice and dice and provide new insights," said Amazon.com CTO Dr. Werner Vogels.

"I always tell developers to work on stuff that matters. It's time to stretch beyond the consumer internet, and what better place to focus than on furthering the cutting edges of science?" said Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media.

Modeled after Last.fm, Mendeley is leading the way with its social reference manager and collaboration platform to make research more productive and transparent. This challenge is all about creating amazing applications that open up its academic data to others.

To claim the grand prize, the winning application should increase scientific collaboration, mash up research data with social media in novel ways, or simply wow the judges by being awesome. Submissions open today, 8 March 2011, and will close on August 31, 2011.

The judging panel further includes Juan Enriquez, the founding director of Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and CEO of Biotechonomy, James Powell, CTO of Thomson Reuters, and John Wilbanks, VP for Science at Creative Commons. More information about the Mendeley API Binary Battle is available at http://dev.mendeley.com.

"The irony of the Internet is that scientists created it, yet it has been underutilized in strengthening the academic community online. A 'Facebook for science data' has never been achieved. With tools like the Mendeley API platform, developers can bring academia back to the center of the Internet," said Mendeley Chief Scientist Dr. Jason Hoyt.

To learn more about Mendeley's tools, visit http://www.mendeley.com, or follow Mendeley on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed.

About Mendeley

Mendeley is a rapidly growing technology startup that has built a platform for researchers to more effectively organize, annotate, share, and discover data. Used by more than 800,000 academic and industry researchers, Mendeley is the world's largest research collaboration platform. Mendeley also provides real-time statistics, trends by research area, and recommendations for related research based on its crowd-sourced database of over 70 million research documents. Launched in January 2009, the company has offices in London and New York, and its investors include those who previously built Skype, Last.fm and Warner Music Group.

SOURCE Mendeley